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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (93572)	1/13/2005 4:50:29 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 108807

"Do you have a good answer for that child?" yes and it begins with all those scientific papers I quoted for you that you don't want to deal with. I understand why you don't want to deal with the research- you may have one book, I have thousands. I went down this road with another non-biologist, who had no grounding in biology, and had never taken a class in evolutionary biology or genetics, and had never even tried to read the latest scientific work in the area. You cannot trust that which you do not understand- and I have no doubt you do not understand evolutionary biology. I do not trust scientists because they are scientists- I look at their work, and I see it makes sense (or it doesn't). When you say there are no transitional species not only does that not make sense from what I have read, it makes no sense from what I have seen- since I have seen transitional fossil species. You have another thing in common with children. You are not educated in the subject you are trying to talk about. I have that problem when it comes to math and economics, so I am sympathetic to you, but totally unconvinced by what you have to say. And I have no desire to play teacher- I know some people enjoy doing that here, but I'd rather get paid for it.

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (93572)	1/13/2005 6:24:40 PM
From: coug	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

J.C. re: <<Another child might ask you, if we evolved from ape-like creatures (just the last 1/16th inch on the yardstick) then how come there still are ape-like creatures around? Why did some of the apes evolve all the way until they became humans, while other apes stayed just as they are? Do you have a good answer for that child?>> Evolution has to be thought of as "Trees, Not ladders" . A common misconception.. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> """Understanding Phylogenies Phylogenetic starbursts Trees, Not Ladders Several times in the past, biologists have committed themselves to the erroneous idea that life can be organized on a ladder of lower to higher organisms. This idea lies at the heart of Aristotle’s Great Chain of Being (see right). Similarly, it’s easy to misinterpret phylogenies as implying that some organisms are more “advanced” than others; however, phylogenies don’t imply this at all. In this highly simplified phylogeny, a speciation event occurred resulting in two lineages. One led to the mosses of today; the other led to the fern, pine, and rose. Since that speciation event, both lineages have had an equal amount of time to evolve. So, although mosses branch off early on the tree of life and share many features with the ancestor of all land plants, living moss species are not ancestral to other land plants. Nor are they more primitive. Mosses are the cousins of other land plants. So when reading a phylogeny, it is important to keep three things in mind: Evolution produces a pattern of relationships A B C D among lineages that is tree-like, not ladder-like. Just because we tend to read phylogenies from left to right, there is no correlation with level of “ advancement.” For any speciation event on a phylogeny, the choice of which lineage goes to the right and which goes to the left is arbitrary. The following phylogenies are equivalent: Biologists often put the clade they are most interested in (whether that is bats, bedbugs, or bacteria) on the right side of the phylogeny. Misconceptions about humans The points described above cause the most problems when it comes to human evolution. The phylogeny of living species most closely related to us looks like this: It is important to remember that: Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees. Humans and chimpanzees are evolutionary cousins and share a recent common ancestor that was neither chimpanzee nor human. Humans are not “higher” or “more evolved” than other living lineages. Since our lineages split, humans and chimpanzees have each evolved traits unique to our own lineages. """" evolution.berkeley.edu <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The Above from "An Evolution Website for Teachers" Very nice site with good diagrams. Keep clicking on 'Next Topic'..The 'Misconception' subject matter is quite interesting. evolution.berkeley.edu c